Welcome to another link-up with CatholicMom.com for Small Success Thursday! Today is the day when we look at what’s going right in our everyday lives and congratulate each other on those little things that are all too easy to overlook.

Once we got our puppy, Frodo Waggins, my life got flip turned upside down. I haven’t had a dog since I grew up and got married, and I don’t remember what it was like to have to deal with the last puppy my family had, since I was 12 and in school all day long. Let me tell you: it’s like having a toddler, only they’re bitey and don’t wear diapers so there’s pee on the floor (and worse)! Our puppy is about 4 1/2 months old now, and he’s part Border Collie and part Beagle. This is a recipe for an active dog who is smart and stubborn. Exactly what you need to throw in the mix when you’re homeschooling two high schoolers, one of whom has ADD, right?

Needless to say, thanks to Frodo, I haven’t been writing nearly as much as I’d like. And I was at wit’s end with this little guy, to boot! Growling and biting and barking and biting and humping everything in sight and biting and humping and biting and…you get the idea. He’s kind of binary at this age. He either hates you or loves you very, VERY much in a rather inappropriate way. But don’t feel bad, he also has the same love-hate relationship with every inanimate object in the house.

Exasperated, and nearly ready to tether the puppy outside overnight and see if he survived the bear, I googled “Why does my puppy bite me so much?” and started reading everything I could. Several articles talked about puppies getting extra bitey when they’re tired, so I searched “How much sleep does my four month old puppy need?”

To quote the clickbait articles, I was shocked at what I found! Puppies at Frodo’s age need between 15 and 20 hours of sleep every day! Frodo was getting about half of that, so it’s no wonder that he was so frantic all the time! Silly me, I sort of expected him to lay down when he was tired, but he’s kind of like my ADD daughter was as a toddler: nonstop movement until she literally falls down and goes to sleep. Except Frodo doesn’t ever do the fall down and go to sleep part unless I put him in the kennel and cover it up. (We call that “closing his door.”)

So my first success is that I have discovered how to keep the puppy from being Insano Dog and we’re on the way to helping him be Sweet Puppy of Our Dreams. (Oh, yeah! We also signed him up for obedience training.)

To go on with the theme of Frodo Waggins, I’ve also been out running/walking with him several times each week, so my activity level is up again. That was super hard in the Two Weeks of Rain period, especially since when it wasn’t raining much, we had to deal with the flooding and debris from the flooding on the usual running paths. (Another upside to the Two Weeks of Rain is that Frodo will now go outside in the grass to do his business when it’s raining.) The only problem with running with Frodo is that he likes to stop suddenly and look at flowers, sticks, goose poop, dog poop, squirrels, ducks, etc. So we’ll walk a bit, then run a bit, then stop and smell a bench where 8,453,621,988 dogs have peed. And that’s not even getting into how we have to greet every one of the People he sees on the path. So I’m out, but not necessarily getting any new PRs.

But someday, Frodo Waggins is going to be The Best Running Buddy Ever! Nathan and I will have to fight over him!

Finally, now that I’m figuring out how to get Frodo to behave (and sleep), I’m writing more and getting more homeschool stuff done. Today’s post is the third day in a row, and I have several more posts scheduled as of this writing. Not only that, but I also have more than half a dozen ideas in the hopper, and I’ve started going back over a book I’ve been working on writing. Our homeschol schedule is largely on track, which is great. (I know, we’re only a few weeks in, and already I’m struggling to be on track. I guess I have a touch of ADD, too.) But over the weekend, the girls and I sat down and figured out a schedule for non-co-op days, and I ham hoping that helps us stay on track all year.